French and Russian soldiers who died during Napoleon's catastrophic retreat from Moscow in 1812 were laid to rest with a military band playing in freezing conditions after they were found in a mass grave in 2019.
Officials and descendants of 19th-century Russian and French military leaders gathered for a windswept ceremony to re-bury the remains of 126 people killed in one of the bloodiest battles of Napoleon's Russian campaign.
The snow fell as the band played in temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius while uniformed pall-bearers carried eight flag-draped caskets at a cemetery in Vyazma, a town more than 200 kilometers west of Moscow. The caskets, containing the remains of 120 soldiers, three women and three teenagers, were then put into the ground to the sounds of a gun salute.
